4.6 No Surcharges. You agree that you will not impose a surcharge or any other fee for accepting PayPal as a payment method. You may charge a handling fee in connection with the sale of goods or services as long as the handling fee does not operate as a surcharge and is not higher than the handling fee you charge for non-PayPal transactions.

Whenever someone signs up for PayPal, they agree to abide by its terms and conditions. One of the conditions is that, as a seller, you cannot add a surcharge (i.e.: asking buyers to pay fees) for accepting it as a form of payment.

2) It encourages scamming. (Re: Why you should never gift money)

Something that a lot of people do not realize is that whenever they send money via "gifting", they can not dispute the charge if the seller does not follow through. When gifting money to someone, that money is being sent to them freely. Let's look at a very possible scenario:

Buyer and Seller agree that Buyer will pay $1,000 for Seller's Gmax Shocker.

Seller tells buyer that buyer must gift the money, or pay fees.

Buyer, to save a few bucks, decides to gift money to the seller.

Seller never ships the Gmax. After two weeks, Buyer posts in the Scammed section on PBN stating his claim.

Everyone and their dog chimes in and tells Buyer to file a dispute with PayPal. PBN mods investigate, side with Buyer, and ban Seller.

Buyer attempts to file dispute with PayPal. However, since the money was gifted, PayPal refuses to process the dispute.

End Result: Seller is banned, but buyer is still out $1,000 with little chance of recovering it.

It is lazy, cheap, and makes the forum look bad.

It is completely understandable for sellers to not want to lose money on PayPal transactions. In the above scenario, our seller would have lost roughly $30 had he eaten the fees. However, with a quick google search, a seller can use a PayPal Fee Calculator to figure out how much to charge to make x dollars after fees. Also, it may just be me, but I think it looks bad on the forum to have plenty of members asking buyers to pay fees. In my opinion, a seller asking for fees is akin to a buyer posting, "PM me your lowest" in a thread. It's cheap, lazy, and looks bad.

Other forums don't allow it.

While PBN is, of course, under no obligation to follow the example set by others, sometimes following the pack can be a good thing. I have linked to the BST rules of two other large paintball forums that do not allow sellers to charge PayPal fees:

Quote:

Originally Posted by MCarter Brown

2.1) Paypal Fees and Gifting
You can not ask for fees to be paid by the buyer. Fees are a cost of doing business. To get exactly $50, search for paypal fee calculator in a search engine, and ask for the amount that would give you $50 after fees. Buyers will not pay for fees.

Gifting is also not allowed. If at any point a seller asks the buyer to send money as a gift, they will be banned. Never, NEVER, never send money as a gift. Gifting means you gave the money freely, so if no product is sent, there is no recourse from the buyers point of view. If paypal finds out you lied about the gift, it's the buyer that gets banned, not the seller. In gifting the buyer takes all responsibility, and therefore the buyer should NEVER gift.

12. Per the PayPal User Agreement, section 4.7: "You agree that you will not impose a surcharge or any other fee for accepting PayPal as a payment method." This means that you, the payment receiver (Seller/Trader), cannot add any fee's to the payment sender (Buyer/Trader) for using PayPal as a payment method.

I agree, But IT should just be more aware, I put people can EITHER pay fees(as im looking to get exactly 100 for my item) or they can gift, Their option. If they want to gift, they made that conscious decision To trust the other person to not steal from them.

I personally, always pay the fees.
Even if it's on someone with 500+ feedback.

Others may have trust in people, But It shouldn't be a rule that you CANNOT gift, Simply that you cannot ask for them to ONLY gift.

I think it's up to their discretion.
But I see a lot of people that really urge the gifting part.

like mcarterbrown you should bump up the price to cover what you want and the paypal fees.

Rule would be unenforceable, you'd just have people list one price in the thread and then say in a PM that that is the Money Order/Gifted price.

Well that wouldn't be hard to get around. Basically follow MCB's format of: No asking for gifted period. Automatic ban if you do.

Screenshot of a PM would be proof enough of a rule violation.

PBN staff would, of course, be free to apply any rules as they see fit; but I don't see that being a huge issue. I'm sure a few bad apples will push the boundaries, but once the example i set, it wouldn't need to be dealt with any further.

We don't make rules about how people get paid here at all. Not about shipping first, paying first or anything else. We have lots of rules and we really don't want to make more. We know people wouldn't listen and we don't want to ban more people.

We see gifting payments as a serious form of trust. If you trust the seller implicitly, you can ship them a money order or gift them a payment. If you don't trust them completely, then use a 3rd party or at least take precautionary steps to protect yourself. If a seller is only accepting gifted payments, then that should be a huge red flag for people to avoid them.

Yeah this site is terrible. Hardforum.com and evga.com have way safer marketplaces.

I would NOT allow people to accept ONLY PayPal Gift payments. That's a negative right when I see it. Either ask the damn buyer to pay a few extra dollars for fee, or don't sell it. Gifting is for gifts, not payments.

I don't care if the member has 300-0-0 ratings, IF something happens, he leaves country, dies, etc. Then that buyer is SOL.

I totally agree, many users on this site are violating paypal's regulations. I really dont like Trading/ Buying/ selling on PBN. Too many scammers for me and I dont like the way mods handle things like that. I mean seriously, if they are not willing to create any new rules to deal with a serious problem, that would reduce the number of scams by a whole lot, if there was no gifting allowed. To me it just shows alot of things about how this website is run. And to tell you the truth, I will probably get an infraction or something for writing this.

Like I said, I'm a member of PC forums, "most" of them are ran great. They require pics with your name, date, and the forum name to be hand-written on a piece of paper. That helps show proof that the seller actually has the item.

Does that mean someone won't get scammed by him? HELL NO. But it DOES mean atleast he has it in his possession, and that will eliminate 99% of scammers. And yeah, get rid of the "gift" bs. That's hocus right there.

You can say "Uhh, well we are the mods, we don't need that many rules." Well then look at all the members getting scammed. On most of the PC forums I'm on, one member a week MAYBE gets scammed. It's nothing like this shabby marketplace.

And yes, I'm curious what PayPal will say if I call them, and let them know that this forum is partaking in "gifting", when it's illegal to gift for purchases.

I totally agree, many users on this site are violating paypal's regulations. I really dont like Trading/ Buying/ selling on PBN. Too many scammers for me and I dont like the way mods handle things like that. I mean seriously, if they are not willing to create any new rules to deal with a serious problem, that would reduce the number of scams by a whole lot, if there was no gifting allowed. To me it just shows alot of things about how this website is run. And to tell you the truth, I will probably get an infraction or something for writing this.

Oh, and to add to the list,

It specifically states in the TOS here that it is AGAINST TOS to post another user's personal info without his consent.

Well wtf?

I see on every "Scam thread", somebody posts the scammers FULL personal details. That's exactly why I won't deal here.

There's two issues with that.

For one, that is wrong of PbNation to just allow, it could cause some serious legal issues if something arose.

For one, just think "if", some idiot that lived near the scammer, went to that address, trespassed, beat him, stole it back, whatever it might be. Well then PbNation will be caught up in LOTS of legal trouble for allowing his info to be leaked on this website.

And for two, just because someone makes a "Scam report" on here, doesn't mean crap until proven. I seen way too many threads here, where a guy says "(Insert name here) scammed me, here's his address, who lives by him? I want him to learn a lesson" Well then a few days later the "scammer" posts, and says he was in the hospital, had family issues, etc.

Well how would you feel if someone went and beat up a completely innocent seller, because too many idiots wanted to have "balls" and go do something about it.

It specifically states in the TOS here that it is AGAINST TOS to post another user's personal info without his consent.

Well wtf?

I see on every "Scam thread", somebody posts the scammers FULL personal details. That's exactly why I won't deal here.

There's two issues with that.

For one, that is wrong of PbNation to just allow, it could cause some serious legal issues if something arose.

For one, just think "if", some idiot that lived near the scammer, went to that address, trespassed, beat him, stole it back, whatever it might be. Well then PbNation will be caught up in LOTS of legal trouble for allowing his info to be leaked on this website.

And for two, just because someone makes a "Scam report" on here, doesn't mean crap until proven. I seen way too many threads here, where a guy says "(Insert name here) scammed me, here's his address, who lives by him? I want him to learn a lesson" Well then a few days later the "scammer" posts, and says he was in the hospital, had family issues, etc.

Well how would you feel if someone went and beat up a completely innocent seller, because too many idiots wanted to have "balls" and go do something about it.

And to add, to what you added to what I said (<-- kinda funny)
The way that I have seen the rules be enforced on this site, is more of does this benefit me? (with me being either the site itself or the person who is "enforcing the rule".

Like when PB stores post links to new things in the used section, and apparently it is fine as long as PBN gets the money from a gold up. that violates 2 BST rules, and they let it go every time.
They never enforce the one thread per item sold rule, not saying that they should (forums would be too crowed and complicated), but then why is it there?

Kind of unrelated, but I also think they should change the definition of used, back to used. They say that new, or only tested goes in a forum, but seriously, only tested? Look at ebay, even new without tags isnt "new".
Like this- Oh dont worry, I only shot a few pods in my backyard, it was never used at all, it was only tested.
^^^ doesnt even make sense. It is just a ploy for more money, and a pretty bad one at that.

*Edit I have found more that i would like to say.
1) John suggested 3rd party, what makes a 3rd party person more reliable than any other person, nothing, it is just because they tend to think that they are better because there name is highlighted in blue. If you get what I am saying, I dont know any of them, honestly for me as a buyer how do I know that a third party person isnt going to rip me off? (I don't)... And then think about what a scammer would say to make you trust them. And think about it, I am not trying to say anything bad about anyone, but John has a lot of money to gain by suggesting that people use third party. It is just like a cars salesman saying that their car is the best.

2) I want to make sure that people know that I am not trying to be rude, annoying, insulting, or anything else that you might say I am being (that is bad). I am just stating what and how many things are wrong with this website.

I do think paypal should step in, might try and send them an email later.

To the OP, thanks for making this thread it brings up a serious problem and it should be addressed instead of getting pushed away.

I agree COMPLETELY with every thing elitegeek has said, we seem to be on the same page.

We don't make rules about how people get paid here at all. Not about shipping first, paying first or anything else. We have lots of rules and we really don't want to make more. We know people wouldn't listen and we don't want to ban more people.

We see gifting payments as a serious form of trust. If you trust the seller implicitly, you can ship them a money order or gift them a payment. If you don't trust them completely, then use a 3rd party or at least take precautionary steps to protect yourself. If a seller is only accepting gifted payments, then that should be a huge red flag for people to avoid them.

John,

This being one of the largest forums in the world, I completely understand where you are coming from. Making a new rule isn't just updating the BST rules post and leaving it at that. It will require more of your time and energy to see it become effective.

With that said, I still feel that it would be worth the staff's time to implement and enforce this rule. The PBN B/S/T is awesome. Selection wise, it is the best place to shop for used paintball equipment in the world. However, like anything, it is not without its faults. Regardless of any rules, there will still be scammers. There will also be the rude/immature "pm me ur lwoest teehehee" post, and "don't ****ing lowball me or i'll flame ur nOOb ***. ur all ******z who dnt desrve to by fr0m me. my sandana is uber sexxx." rules. And regardless of the circumstances, people should naturally always assume the mantra buyer beware.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people on the forums who do not have the common sense to avoid dealing with such losers; adults and kids alike. While PBN is not liable for someone being scammed, I still feel that implementing this rule would be a worthwhile use of your time. You can't save everybody, but you could increase the user experience for a lot of people.

On a side note, I'd like to add that from my observations, the staff does seem to do a good job dealing with scammers when complaints arise.

Regardless of the final decision, thanks for taking the time to at least read through/consider this.

You guys are jumping all over the map. Try to focus or nothing will get accomplished. Or just use this time to vent. Up to you.

3rd party - I don't want to do them and I lose money for the amount of time I spend, paint I shoot, batteries I use, money lost to fees and shipping I lose out on. Saying I have something to profit by recommending it is an asinine accusation. I do it because no one else does it well. And I only do it because I can't very well tell someone they should have used a 3rd party when there was no one credible even offering the service.

Used - The problem is PbN is so big that stores were opening items, calling them "used," selling them for cheaper to break MAP and putting other stores out of business. If you want less paintball stores, keep advocating it.

Stores selling New items in the Used forums - They are not allowed to list new items in used and get no special privileges. However, anyone who has an active New thread and thinks they'd get more business in the Used forum can post a new thread with a link provided its News Upped. We need a better way to do this so suggestions are welcome. The issue is that the used forums get more attention so people want their ads there.

Most people who get tangled up here have simply never done an online deal before and either jumped at what they thought was an unbelievable opportunity, did a deal with someone who shouldn't have been trusted or one or both sides didn't communicate well enough.

It doesn't matter how many rules we make if people still jump at deals that are too good to be true. That's a real problem. Making rules might help. We aren't against it, but we aren't jumping into it. You have to remember, that's a rule for Paypal partially because they directly profit from it. Not to protect anyone.

Marma, I'm not saying it's PbN's fault for when someone gets scammed, BUT I do think they should change their rules.

You ain't responsible if your friend smokes, BUT when he's in your car, you should atleast have the balls to make your own rules. That's what the staff needs to do here, basically make it stricter, so "hopefully" less people will get scammed. Again, it's not their responsibility, but it's stupid to say it's a buyers fault for getting scammed. I seen a guy on here the other day that got scammed outta his $900 marker, and he had over 400 feedback ratings, so no he wasn't a "stupid" member just because he got lured into a scam. It happens to us all, but it'd be nice to make it so scammers don't just lurk here.

Could I suggest adding a note somewhere in the BST rules that states PayPals TOS and advises against gifting payments. From my experience, a lot of people are unaware that gifting opens them up to being scammed. Basically, a "gift at your own risk" statement.

Personally, as a seller, I'm willing to eat the fees to protect myself and the buyer. But I get why not everyone does not share that sentiment, especially when selling high end markers.

Most people who get tangled up here have simply never done an online deal before and either jumped at what they thought was an unbelievable opportunity, did a deal with someone who shouldn't have been trusted or one or both sides didn't communicate well enough.

Oh really? Maybe you can tell this guy, and many other high-feedback members that "they have simply never done an online deal before."

So John, basically they "scratch" your back, so you scratch theirs? Hmm I see how this place is..

We'd like a better way. Suggestions?

Quote:

Originally Posted by EliteGeek91

Oh really? Maybe you can tell this guy, and many other high-feedback members that "they have simply never done an online deal before."

He didn't gift the payment! So warning him about gifting wouldn't have done anything.

I don't know how that deal is relevant in any way to this discussion. Plus, I never said all. I said most. I stand by that.

The only way to make deals completely safe would be for us to do a 3rd party service on everything sold here. And you just applauded the guy who said that I shouldn't advocate it. It sounds like you just want to complain and not fix anything.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EliteGeek91

I seen a guy on here the other day that got scammed outta his $900 marker, and he had over 400 feedback ratings, so no he wasn't a "stupid" member just because he got lured into a scam.

Really? Link to the guy with 400 feedback who was scammed by gifting a payment?

I also totally disagree, most people I see that get scammed, arent the super high feedback people (like 600+), but they definitely arent people that have, "never done an online deal before". They almost always have between 5 and 150 feedback here on PBN. I know that some people would try and go under the MAP with "used", but used is used. I know that I have been saying a lot, but there are some changes that need to be made to this website, to make it safer for the people that would like to use it. Including B/S/T regulations, (going to jump around here) and also what type of ads (mainly what providers) are allowed on the website, tons of people (including me) get messages that the ads hosted here are distributers of malware and viruses.

There are a lot of people that ask for gifting, that just needs to be stopped.

The reason I in particular am jumping around, is because one thing always leads to another, and it is all related, in my mind at least.

That rule might help Paypal make some money, but that is not the point of what I am talking about, if you dont pay the fees, paypal wont protect you, or help you.

To me it just seems like there is a lot that could be done to improve PBN, but no one is interested in doing it.

* edit; I also am not trying to say anything bad about your 3rd party, I am just saying you recommending 3rd party is or at least looks like a toyota salesman recommending a camry over a honda civic, like recommending your own thing, even though that might not be the way it was meant.